


Personal Perspective

by hjcallipygian



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-07-14
Updated: 2008-07-14
Packaged: 2018-02-06 05:27:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1846018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hjcallipygian/pseuds/hjcallipygian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spike and Willow kill some time together one night, waiting until it's safe to return to the house.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Personal Perspective

**Author's Note:**

> After Spike and Dru broke up. Beyond that, it's up to reader discretion. If it strikes you as a particular time, I'd love to know when.
> 
> This was an assignment fic. My assignment was, "By the light of the silvery moon." The pairings were Buffy/Spike and Willow/Oz, but no pairing comes into play here at all. Rather than go the way I intended it, I asked myself the question in the first line of the story and the characters ran away with it from there, kind of mocking me along the way. I don't know what to tell you. To my prompt provider, for whom I'm sure this is not at all what you wanted nor expected, I say: blame Spike and Willow. Clearly it's not MY fault. =)

"So how come you aren't on fire from the sun right now?"

Spike lifted his head and looked over at Willow like she was insane. He was fairly inoculated from crazy questions after years with Drusilla, but this wasn't something he expected from the redhead lying on the grass beside him.

"Well, because it's night," Spike said.

"Duh," Willow said. She gestured up at the sky -- the full moon and myriad stars -- before her arms flopped back to the ground. "But the moon doesn't have any light source of its own. That's just reflected sunlight, shining down on you, a vampire."

"It has to be direct sunlight, not reflected."

"That's not true. I've hit a vampire with reflected sunlight from a mirror."

"Really?"

"Yeah, it was neat." Willow paused for a moment, but Spike doubted that was the end of it. "I wonder if it has to do with something mystical or scientific. Like, if you get enough of the UV rays in the reflection it has enough oomph behind it to dust a vamp, or if it's a mystical symbol of day and growth and life rather than a wavelength thing."

Spike shrugged, an odd movement while on his back. "I dunno. Just glad I'm not burning."

Willow chuckled.

The sound seemed odd to Spike; in his mind, Willow giggled, like a young girl. But it had been years since Willow was just a girl. Now she was a woman, and she chuckled. It seemed like such an abrupt change over just a few years. Probably seemed like an eternity to her, though.

"I can't imagine what that would be like, burning," Willow said. Her voice was somber, significantly changed from her mood of just a few moments ago. Sometimes it took nearly all of his energy just to keep up.

"Not pleasant," Spike said. "Not a way I'd want to go out."

"Have you ever thought of that?" Willow asked. "How you'd want to go out?"

"Well, yeah," Spike said. "Live for two hundred years, you're bound to think of stuff like that at least once."

"Yeah. And, as a vampire, there's really only a limited number of options," Willow pointed out. "Whereas I could die from all kinds of things."

They were silent for a while. A few sparse clouds floated by, casting small shadows on the already-dark ground around them.

Finally, Spike said, "Stake or beheading, in a fight."

"Hmm?"

"That's how I'd want to go. Not being burned by fire or sunlight, but in a fight, bested by some hot little number where I cop one last feel before I go."

Willow sighed. "I like boobs."

Spike rolled his eyes. "Yes, I know. Super-human hearing, remember? Try to stay on topic, Red."

"Sorry." Willow cleared her throat. "Um. I think I'd like to die in my sleep, where I wouldn't feel it."

"Nah. I want the pain -- I want to feel it, to know it when it happens. Pain's what it means to be alive, that your nerves are working and your brain is processing."

"I guess. Still."

They were quiet again for a while.

"Do you ever just sit there and think about it?" Willow asked. "I mean, you've been alive for the formation and dissolution of the Soviet Union. You've witnessed Germany form, be split up after a war, then the Berlin Wall come down and the country come together again. You were a young man when the American Revolution was fought, and a young man during the Civil Rights Movement of the sixties. It's so... epic."

Spike shrugged. "Nothing's epic if it's the only thing you know. Could say the same things about your life, just with different examples, really."

Willow nodded. "I guess. I suppose, what we do, it doesn't really lend itself to wrapping your head around it."

"That's for certain."

Again, they were quiet for a while.

"Do you think it's safe to go back to the house now?" Spike asked.

Willow lifted her arm and looked at her watch. "Hmm... Yeah, should be."

"Think everyone's back to human again?"

Willow sat up and shook dirt and grass out of her hair. "Hope so. Only one safe way to find out for sure, though."

Spike looked up at her, eyebrow raised. "Use your cell to call and ask?"

Willow nodded. "Oh, hell yes. You think I'm going back there if Buffy's still a hippopotamus?"


End file.
